Tag: tiff2014

Not everybody watches quite as many films as some of us. There are those where getting out to a theatre isn't a weekly (or, in my case, daily) occurrence, where the schlepp of getting there, standing in line, getting...

My time as an attendee of the Toronto International Film Festival has nicely overlapped the transition from Festival Then to Festival Now, which I'd argue has taken place over just about exactly the last fifteen years, the same period for...

Another Toronto International Film Festival wraps up, and we look at some of the award winning films, such as The Imitation Game and Felix & Meira, and talk about the remarkable documentary The Look Of SilenceVideo embedded below...

Since I saw it back at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act Of Killing has lived up to my early impression - that the work is truly one of the great films of all time,...

The directors of The Editor, Adam Brooks and Matthew Kennedy, along with the rest of their cohorts from VHS-obsessed Winnipeg film collective Astron-6, must have been mighty pissed when they caught wind of Berberian Sound Studio. Peter Strickland's 2012 film was...

It's days after I saw it, and I still haven't decided if Marjane Satrapi's The Voices is sublime or shit. I think, frankly, that it's an unholy combination of both, a mess of a film that still has moments...

A rundown fishing town on the coast of the Arctic Ocean is the rugged edge-of-the-world stage for Andrey Zvyagintsev's complex, but quite accessible, new film. There is a visual mastery of relating wide open natural spaces, with precise man-made interiors, present...

Starting off with what is undoubtedly the opening credit sequence of the year, Peter Strickland's The Duke of Burgundy never ceases to surprise and delight over its 100 minutes, offering a dry but meticulous humour and rhythm. Those credits, offering...

Ivorian Philippe Lacôte's film Run is a brash fiction debut for this documentarian. The film begins with an off-camera assassination, and through a series of concentric flashback's we're told the story of Run. Part gangster and part activist, Run...

Taking on another true story after his hugely successful Dallas Buyer's Club, Jean-Marc Vallée this time turns his lens onto the story of Cheryl Strayed, a woman with a past who takes it upon herself to hike hundreds of...

The first two minutes of Nakashima Tetsuya's violent and unrelenting The World of Kanako are a litmus test on whether one should proceed. A frenetic orgy of editing non-sequitors, both assaulting and attention grabbing, occurs right before slamming into a stylized...

It's Toronto International Film Festival time, with a street level look at a few gems from this year's crop. Nightcrawler is dark and disturbing, Kevin Smith's Tusk is a strange and wild midnight tale, and The Last Five Years is a...

There's something primal about our fascination with storms, something connected for even the most urban of city dwellers to the enormous forces that shape our planet. It's no surprise that earlier civilizations named gods after these elements, and that...

It's common knowledge that a pure musical takes more than a bit of suspension of disbelief. From the first notes, you kind of have to go with the flow, taking in the abstraction as it comes. On stage, this level...

When I saw Rolf de Heer's Bad Boy Bubby in an arthouse theatre back in the mid-90s, I was totally unprepared for such raw and nihilistic filmmaking. A violent and dark film, it was clear from that one film...

"You saw me all fucked up and I am still here." So says Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) to his Italian girlfriend, Louise (Nadia Hilker), after discovering that her 'little secret' is well outside his comfort zone. It is this moment, well...

In between screenings of the ridiculously fun and Amblin-esque popcorn muncher Big Game at the Toronto International Film Festival, I managed to have a chat with Finnish director Jalmari Helander and his young star Onni Tommila. The young actor was a little...

As is often the case with a classical heroic journey, what you get out of the quest is often what you bring to it. With some humility and patience, you'll be rewarded; wanting rewards without putting in the work...

The Connection (titled La French in its native county) has the makings of a great film, which is what makes the final product such a disapointment. Drawing upon the same case that was the basis for the William Friedkin...